by Liz Lawler
She had last looked through the bags and boxes in the days after they’d arrived. The police had already been through them and taken what they wanted. They still had items such as Zoe’s laptop, and a hairbrush and toothbrush from which they’d obtained DNA, in evidence. The rest had been left in Zoe’s bedroom until it arrived at Emily’s flat. She had folded the clothes neatly and washed the ones that had been delivered straight from a laundry basket. She threw away the half-used bottles and tubes of toiletries and boxed the more valuable and personal items such as makeup, jewellery, CDs, photographs, text books. From memory there were no diaries. Zoe had never been the type to keep one. Growing up with technology, she had used it to her advantage. With mild dyslexia she had used a laptop through most of her secondary schooling, and for her studies and assignments as a student nurse Emily was fairly sure she had done the same.
The twisted necks of a couple of bin liners looked loosened, the shoulders of the bags less full. Had Zoe taken some stuff? Clothes she perhaps wanted? In the top of one of these bags was Emily’s leather jacket. She was sure of that because when she had found it among Zoe’s clothing she had recalled that it was Zoe who last wore it at the music festival because she was cold. One whiff of the collar and she had instantly smelled her sister’s perfume, and for that reason had kept it bagged tightly to preserve her essence.
There were ten bin liners to look through. She started with the ones that looked fuller and undisturbed, ending with the two that she suspected had been opened recently. Her leather jacket was not in any of them. She could empty them all out properly, but felt sure it wouldn’t be there. It had definitely been placed right at the top of one of them. And now it was missing. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Zoe could be wearing her jacket right this minute, waiting for Emily to come and find her.
‘Oh Zoe, why are you doing this to me?’ she whispered. ‘Why don’t you just come home?’
A memory of her little sister saying her prayers sprang to mind – though this had never been taught or encouraged by their parents. Wearing her favourite nightie, a pink one printed with Cinderella, she had peeked through her hands to see if Emily was watching and listening and giggled when she saw that she was, before changing the words to the prayer Emily had taught her. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the lord to have some sweets.’
She had been a sweet child. But spoiled. At twelve she was borrowing Emily’s makeup and clothes as if she were a teenager, trying to grow up too fast. Emily had come down hard on her a few times, which then resulted in sulks. When she decided she wanted to be a nurse, Emily hadn’t leapt with joy, as her sister had never liked hard work and was therefore choosing the wrong profession. Her grades had only just been good enough to get her into nursing, and she’d passed them with a lot of tutoring from Emily.
Emily knew that she would have to tell her parents about the note and suspected she was more likely to find something like an old birthday card at their home. While she only ever received a text saying ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Happy Christmas’, their parents would have received cards.
She would go over there tomorrow and find something with her sister’s writing on. She was on an early shift and wanted to go into work to see Dalloway and reassure him that she was fit for the job. There was no more need for him to be worried.
*
Emily finished her shift the following day feeling satisfied. It had been a good day and nothing dramatic or untoward had happened. Patients had gone to theatre, had their operations and were recovering nicely. Dalloway was happy. She could see in his eyes that he was no longer perturbed by her behaviour and after his ward round had even complimented her on a job well done. She had a lightness in her step, despite the fact that she had just done an eight-hour shift with barely a break.
She was on her way to her parents’ house, intent on getting what she needed. Geraldine was wasting no time and nor would she. The detective inspector had arranged for a crime scene investigator to visit Emily’s home at six-thirty that morning to collect the photograph frame, which had been placed in a large evidence bag. Geraldine had texted her the night before to forewarn her of the early time, and Emily had reassured her that it suited her as she was on early shift and would be awake. Emily texted Geraldine in the afternoon to tell her her plans and also to ask if her parents could not be informed just yet about the letter she had found. She didn’t want them taking up Geraldine’s time needlessly and looking for another five minutes of fame. She would clean their house as she normally did and while doing so, would search for a birthday or Christmas card. When they had proof that the note was from Zoe they could then be told. No doubt her mother would phone some reporter, maybe hoping for a pay-out for her story. Though Emily would be surprised if she had any takers for a story of a missing adult who’d written a letter saying she wasn’t coming home. What her parents seemed to forget was that it was not illegal for an adult to go missing. They were lucky the police had looked so long and hard for Zoe already and were now prepared to act on this new find.
Her head down, she checked her mobile for any replies from Geraldine. There were two. One simply read, ‘OK’. The second caused Emily to sigh:
Will need to discuss further. Your parents are next of kin.
Emily bumped into someone walking the other way. It was her fault for not looking where she was going. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and then stared in concern at the small woman. Panicked eyes were trying to focus. Dressed in a short-sleeved white blouse and dark skirt, her legs bare and feet puffy, encased in white-laced plimsolls, she looked frazzled. Her upper lip was perspiring and tendrils of hair clung to her damp forehead.
‘Hey, are you OK? Can I help?’
She stared at Emily frantically. ‘I need to find my niece. She come here and now she no go home.’
‘OK, OK, we’ll find her. What’s her name? What does she look like?’ Emily asked, staring at the faces passing them.
The woman waved her hand in agitation. ‘She small. She has dark hair like me. She very pretty and she young woman.’
Emily placed an arm around her shoulder and steered her towards the entrance. ‘OK, that’s good. Let’s go to reception and see if they can help to find her.’ She pressed the call button for the lift. ‘What day did she come in? Today? Yesterday?’
The woman pulled away and Emily was alarmed at her panicked state. Her upper body was shaking, hands pressing hard against her mouth. ‘You no understand. Katka no go home. My sister tell me she not get off plane. Dr Dalloway say he don’t know where she gone. But she come here first. She then must take plane home, but she not return and my sister blame me. Katka is only daughter.’
Emily wanted to take her somewhere more private and was relieved when the lift door opened. She bundled the woman into it and tried to calm her. ‘Don’t upset yourself. I’m sure everything will be alright. When did Katka come here?’
‘Thirty June,’ she cried, her voice muffled by her hands.
Emily stared at the bowed head. She felt a ringing in her ears, a sickness in the pit of her stomach. She must have misheard her. Thirtieth of June. The day she had her operation. The day she saw a young woman in a bed beside her. She sucked back the cry, clamped her hand to her mouth and saw the woman raise her head.
Her eyes fixed on Emily. ‘You know something?’ she said excitedly.
Emily shook her head fast.
‘You know something. I see in your face.’
She shook her head again, inching away from the woman. When the lift pinged and released the doors, Emily stepped back fast, straight into Dalloway.
He put a steadying hand on her shoulder and would have spoken but for the wail of the woman behind her. ‘Oh Dr Dalloway. They still no find her.’
He immediately went to the woman’s aid and, in the privacy of the lift, enfolded her in his arms. ‘Shush now, Maria. Katka will return home. You must not despair. She will return.’
Wanting to leave them before the woman quest
ioned her again, Emily quickly slipped away, dashing for the stairs. Her heart was pounding. The good feeling she’d had all day had evaporated. The problem she thought gone had come back. Was it possible that the young woman she had seen had been this woman’s niece? Who was now missing? She wanted to run from the situation. Deny she had seen the woman. She had Zoe to consider.
Keeping her head down, she hurried to the car park. She would not think about it now. The woman’s niece was probably safe and sound. She would drive to her parents’ house. Do the job she was given. She could not get entangled in someone else’s misery. Yet as she drove away from the hospital, all she could think about was that she had not imagined the girl in the bed beside her, her small arm hanging limply over the side of the bed, her hand jerking each time they pressed her chest. All she could think was that she now knew her name.
*
Emily could tell her parents had not yet been told about the note. Geraldine had either not found time to speak to them or was delaying telling them. They were sat in their usual places in the smoke-filled sitting room with the television on, her father snoring and her mother already looking to pick a fight.
‘Found time to see us, then? From your new job?’
‘Sorry, Mum, it’s been another busy week. But I’m here now, so I’m going to give the house a tidy. You want me to get you anything while I’m here?’
Her mother turned her head away and resumed watching Escape to the Country. Emily slipped out of the room, making her way upstairs. There were three bedrooms: one that belonged to her parents, one that had been her own and one that had belonged to Zoe. Hers and Zoe’s were now empty shells. There was just a bed and wardrobe in each, though the last time she was in there dusting, she had noticed her sister’s bed had been made. She didn’t think this had been done in the hope of Zoe returning. It was more likely that her father slept there on account of his snoring.
After half an hour of rummaging through her parents’ bedroom drawers Emily found what she was looking for: an old birthday card for their father, a pint of beer on the front. She knew it wasn’t from her as she would never pick a card advertising any form of alcohol, jokingly or not, for either parent. She opened it and was instantly disappointed. Zoe hadn’t written a single proper word. Instead she’d put a row of kisses, and written luvya followed by the letter Z in blue ink.
She continued to search for others, but that was her only find. Evidently her parents were not sentimental enough to keep mementos from their daughters. She sat on her parents’ bed in frustration, her mind only half on the job. Bumping into Maria had completely thrown her. Just when she thought she had answers for why that young woman had been in her room, she’d now heard Maria’s niece was missing. She found it difficult to concentrate, and wished that her life was simple. Why couldn’t it be easy to find a goddamn piece of paper with her sister’s handwriting? It was ridiculous. There had to be something her sister had written on. She could not have reached adulthood without a sample of her writing being left somewhere. There would be patient notes, for a start. She would have to write in them. But finding a sample of her sister’s handwriting from a patient’s notes would be a mammoth task. She would have to track down tutors to find out which wards her sister was placed on, which patients she had been allocated. She would let Geraldine know of her concerns and hope that she could come up with an answer. In the meantime, she would keep searching and pray that her sister’s fingerprints would be found on the note or that she was seen on CCTV.
She could not lose hope. Zoe was out there. As she thought about this she was haunted by another memory, of another young woman, who was also missing.
Chapter Fifteen
Geraldine put aside the plastic bowl of salad remains, trying to convince herself that the Subway salad had filled her. She would have liked it more if it had come with one of their warm baked breads so that she could make a sandwich out of it. The report on her screen had been a shock. She hadn’t expected to receive it so quickly. She felt a sense of relief that she had held off from speaking to the Jacobs parents, because what could she tell them now? Their daughter had received a message from their other, missing daughter and the only prints found on it were Emily’s. The only prints found on the photograph frame were Emily’s as well. So, either someone had worn gloves, or else . . .
She had yet to reply to Emily’s text about being unable to find a sample of Zoe’s writing. She had yet to reply because she knew how much manpower and how many hours such a task would take. It could be done, of course, but she would rather find an easier way, a less costly way. The search through CCTV had drawn a blank. A sighting fitting a description of Zoe Jacobs was seen, but it was of her sister, Emily, the two so alike it was hard to tell them apart. Geraldine had sent two further officers up to Margaret’s Buildings to check with shop, business and café owners in the hope that they had their own security cameras that might have captured an image of the missing woman. Two of the businesses did have them, but on both recordings she was not seen.
She hoped this wasn’t a desperate ploy of Emily’s, a kick to get the investigation going again. Such things had happened before, usually from desperate parents suddenly coming across an item of clothing that their child was wearing, found two streets away, because they heard that someone ‘funny’ lived there. They used desperate measures to keep the police looking – and ensure they didn’t give up.
She would visit Emily and tell her the outcome of their findings and see what reaction she received. Her gut instinct was telling her there was something off about this letter business. Had Emily made herself believe it was genuine before coming to the police with her find? Did she believe in something of her own making? Was it a convenience that a sample of Zoe’s handwriting could not be found?
Dipping two fingers into the salad bowl, she swiped the strands of lettuce though the residual dressing. Starving herself was not going to make her slimmer. She had a week to go before the wedding and wondered if she could sweat off a stone by then by wrapping herself in clingfilm.
*
Emily parked two streets away from her road in a residents’ permit spot. It was the only space she could legally find. Unless you had off-street parking, owning a car in a city like Bath was more hassle than it was worth, especially if you were able to walk or cycle to work. She rarely used it, unless she was visiting her parents, and as it drew nearer to having it serviced she thought of getting rid of her car altogether. It would be cheaper to get a taxi for the short journeys she made, but it was the thought of that sudden imagined call from Zoe, always in the middle of the night asking her to come and rescue her, that made her keep it.
At eight o’clock it was still daylight, but there was a nip in the evening air and she shrugged her cardigan on as she made the five-minute walk to her flat. She’d heard nothing back from Geraldine since her last text and was hoping to have heard some news from her by now.
Turning right onto Catharine Place, she walked along the pavement and suddenly went rigid, her feet stuck to the ground, her body unable to move, her eyes wide and staring at the image ahead. Some thirty metres ahead of her she saw the back of a woman, as tall as herself, of a similar build, with short-cropped black hair. She wore a short tan leather jacket nipped in at the waist, her long legs in dark jeans. Emily’s breath hitched in her throat and she had to make an effort to get her voice to work. ‘Zoe!’
The woman carried on walking and Emily broke into a trot. ‘Zoe!’ she hollered. For a brief second the woman paused and turned her head a fraction and Emily’s trot sped up to an all-out run. ‘Zoe, stop right there!’
The woman turned the corner and went out of view and Emily ran faster, her eyes fixed on the corner where Zoe had disappeared. Her legs were pumping hard and her breathing was ragged. She looked for a gap between the vehicles to cross the road, then made a dash between two parked cars. She heard the screech of brakes before she felt the blow to her hip sweeping her off her feet and landing her ha
rd down on the bonnet of a car on the opposite side of the road.
She lay there, winded, and groaned with pain, the breath knocked out of her.
An elderly man leaned over her, visibly shaken, his hands waving all over the place. ‘You just ran out! I couldn’t stop,’ he yelled in her face.
‘Did you see her?’ she asked him.
‘I’m calling an ambulance. You need to be checked over.’
She made to sit up and he pressed her gently back. ‘Please, just stay still.’ Emily could hear him on the phone requesting an ambulance and wanted to stop him.
‘Did you see her?’ she asked again in a stronger voice, agitated and unwilling to lie still.
‘See who?’
‘My sister,’ she cried. ‘I was running after her.’
The man shook his head, bewildered. ‘I didn’t see anyone, not even you.’
‘I’ve got to get after her. I can’t let her disappear again.’ She struggled up and slid off the bonnet onto her feet. Her face white, the colour leached away. Then slowly and without murmur she slid all the way to the ground.
*
Her injuries were minor; soft-tissue bruising to her left hip, which would leave her sore and stiff for a few days, but no bone injuries. They put her collapse down to a simple faint, her blood pressure falling as she stood up too quickly. A senior nurse practitioner had examined her and was happy for her to be discharged if her next set of observations stayed stable.
Emily lay back on the trolley, the curtains pulled round the cubicle to give her privacy. They had opened three times so far as ex-colleagues heard of her admission and popped in to say hello. She’d smiled and reassured each of them, waving away their concern, and now lay listening to the familiar sounds of what was once her world. The muted conversations between doctor and patient, nurse and patient, told her exactly what was happening. She didn’t need to be in the cubicles with them to see their expressions or their actions to know exactly what was going on.